The Phoenix Festival 2018

Last weekend my family, friends and I headed into Cirencester town centre for their free annual music festival: The Phoenix Festival. A two day event held in the Abbey Grounds, Cirencester showcasing local bands and tribute artists.

The festival is run by volunteers and relies solely on donations, fundraising and sponsors. Entry is free but they encourage you to make a donation when you enter or leave the site. Which we did. 🙂

This year’s headline acts were Abba and Queen tribute acts. Unfortunately I missed out on Abba as my future sister in law and a good friend of mine had tickets to see Charlie Simpson of Busted DJ at Cirencester’s night club: Reva, so we had to leave early to get to there.

From work colleagues and family members I spoke to Abba were fantastic. It’s a shame we had to miss them! 🙁

The event has three stages, a performer’s arena, various stalls (including Planet All Stars who are Cirencester’s own comic book store) and a handful of fair ground rides.

Planet All Stars display

It’s a family event with many having picnics on the grass during the day time acts, but there are also a few food stalls and a bar tent for the adults amoung us. 😉

The Vaults put on a cider bar and Corinium Brewery brought along a selection of ales. There are also a couple of stalls selling festival merchandise – I picked up a wrist band to go with my one from last year.

The bands 🎤🎸🥁

A lot of the bands I saw performing had a rock vibe, which I loved and played covers of some of my favourite rock songs.

Of the bands I saw this year, my favourites were Before Dawn, Subslider and Bad Obsession. Along with Sunday’s headline act Flash.

Before Dawn – a Cirencester band playing covers of rock and pop songs. We last saw them at the Mini Phoenix festival and this time they were performing on The Vaults stage. They’re lead singer has a powerful voice and I enjoyed listening to their take on Bon Jovi’s , You Give Love a Bad Name.

Family favourite Subslider who are now in their 21st year of performing were on the main stage Saturday afternoon. We made sure we got a good spot to watch them perform. They were great as always and told us they had a new album out now.

Bad Obsession, based in Cirencester were a band I really wanted to see having missed their Christmas Eve gig last year. They did not disappoint! With a great mix of rock and metal covers, they’re performance had a lot of energy and got the crowd going. They played the main stage, and told us they have an upcoming gig at The Vaults on the 29th September which I’m hoping to go too.

Queen tribute act ‘Flash’ were perfect. Playing a lot of Queen favourites from Fat Bottom Girls to Radio Gaga and Bohemian Rhapsody to Another One Bites the Dust. Flash really got the crowd going and were as close to the real thing as you could get; they ended their set with a medley of We will Rock You and We are the Champions. A great way to finish the festival.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what they bring to next year’s festival!